


the crownless again shall be king (doomsday 2019 ficlets)

by oh_anakin



Category: Hiccup Series - Cressida Cowell
Genre: Dismemberment, Epilogue, Gen, References to bullying, Sadness, Semi Canon Divergence, Whump, cauterization of wounds, i am not kind to hiccup in this unfortunately, i have problems with how the whole snotlout thing was handled so i wrote a thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 14:28:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22038571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_anakin/pseuds/oh_anakin
Summary: i half-assed some ficlets for the twelve days of doomsday 2019, and i posted them over here on ao3 for posterity.only lightly edited. be warned.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 19





	1. Day 10

I sincerely hope you have never had the misfortune of being anywhere near the sharp pointy end of a dragon's claw. Any dragon's claw, really, but particularly not any of the large, monstrous ones.

Even when dragons do not mean to hurt you, hanging around dragons is a dangerous business. Human skin is so very soft and delicate, it's like paper to them. 

However, this dragon absolutely did mean to hurt Hiccup. 'Hurt' is a small, pathetic word for what it truly wanted-- that's like saying a murderer just wanted to 'bother' his Murderee. Dragging Hiccup down below the sands to be killed was its goal, the only thought that tiny brain could or would conceive.

As I said. 

Some dragons really ARE monsters.

The Monster's claw closed around Hiccup's ankle. Hiccup did not have time to scream before he felt the CRACK, the crush and crumple as the claw inadvertently twisted hiccup's foot off its joint.

(I can only assume the foot was left behind in the sand above the cave, or perhaps fell where no one could see it.

Either way, Hiccup would forever be left with a physical reminder of this, the darkest time of his life.)

Hiccup did not have time to scream, which made the agony even worse. Pure pain lanced up his remaining flesh, and his head spun between wakefulness and black unconsciousness.

if the Monster of the Amber Slavelands had not been holding him so tightly, he very well could have bled to death. 

But the claw closed around the wound, stemming the flow of blood very much like a man-made tourniquet would. 

Somehow, Hiccup managed to keep from drowning in agony, to recognize the Monster and figure out what chance he might have at saving his own life. 

Later, after Hiccup stabbed the Monster of the Amber Slavelands, the Wodensfang said apologetically, "this will be quite painful," and hopped down to where Hiccup's wound still lay raw and open. It was then torched with the strongest fire that little dragon could summon, so it would no longer bleed. Hiccup fainted, so he did not remember most of this process. 

In the years that followed, Hiccup tried several things to see what fit best, but he'd always walk with a slight limp on his series of prosthetics. (The wooden ones got eaten by Toothless, and the jeweled ones were too heavy for him to wear, so it was rare for him to be seen with the same one twice.)

Toothless went nosing about for something, anything to help his human walk again. 

He only found a wine cup which was just tight enough to fit around Hiccup's stump, and they tied it on with the remains of Hiccup's pant leg. 

Hiccup took a stick, got to his feet, and limped into the Maze of Mirrors. 

(It's not what parts you do or don't have that make you a Hero, or a human. It's not what horrors you triumph over or simply survive, not entirely. It is not even about how you react to such hard obstacles. Pain can spark a change in you, for better or worse. Sometimes, pain is just pain, however.

What you live for? What drives you to live through those horrific experiences? How you choose to carry the weight of the world? 

THAT is what makes you a Hero. THAT is what makes you a human.)


	2. Day 11

The inside of one’s mind is a terrible place. i’m afraid that’s a universal truth, no matter how good of a person YOU think you are. 

  
Take everything you’ve ever done, mixed with anything anyone else could have ever done to you, add in a dash of good old bad luck, a drop of malicious imagination, and a pinch of what-might-have-been for flavor… and then take a spoonful of this horrible, bitter concoction every day for eighteen years, swallow resentment and hatred down with your morning porridge and midnight snack. 

  
What Snotface Snotlout became was not inevitable. 

  
But it was, unfortunately, unsurprising. 

Snotlout, telling the truth for perhaps the first time in his really-not-long-at-all life, spitting what had always been burning inside of him in between their blades. 

Snotlout was pouring his heart out into the blade strokes as much as he was into his words, and hiccup barely had breath to say what needed to be said. 

  
A torrent of the torment Snotlout had lived with for eighteen years, and Hiccup found himself feeling guilty, even though it was not HIS fault he’d been born to Stoick, not HIS fault the laws of bloodline were written the way they were. HE had not chosen for Snotlout, but the other boy’s story was nevertheless sympathetic, in its own tragic way.   
  
  
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want this any more than you did. I didn’t choose to be born… I didn’t choose for the world to be the way it was when we were boys, and although I AM sort of the reason it is the way it is now… 

  
"The past, it won’t change. Our home burned and no King or Crown can make it the way it was. I think you know that, Snotlout.” And here that horrible sympathy again, and it made Snotlout huff, purple with rage.

"Neither of us can go back. We can’t un-choose what we chose. But you can make a NEW choice.“

  
Hiccup barely managed to block Snotlout’s blade, and the vibrations from the clashing metal shook him from head to toe, scrambling Snotlout’s next furious words into an incomprehensible soup between Hiccup’s ears. What Hiccup had said barely registered, as Snotlout was still spilling years of misery to the wind, to his sword, to Hiccup, to himself most of all. 

  
"Neither of us can go back,” Snotlout repeated, lips curling around the words. Disgusted, and grieving.


	3. Day 2 (posted on Day 12)

> _…Because I am writing my memoirs I find I have to write it down, as it is such an important part of my journey to becoming a Hero. Even though I know I will never be able to show it to anyone of my own time._
> 
> _As soon as I have finished writing these papers, I shall lock them in a box. I shall throw that box into the sea._
> 
> – ** _How to be a Pirate, page 211_**

The woman had three names tattooed on her arm.

BANE OF ALVINSMEN, it read in gigantic red-inked letters, patterned like dragon-scales. 

In smaller, flower-shaped cursive, JEWEL OF THE ARCHIPELAGO was written across the flat of her arm. 

In the smallest letters of all, curled around her wrist like a bracelet of the finest jewels: KERFUFFLE HALF-CROWNED. 

A name more suited for a child than a grown woman of fifty, perhaps, but she had many others to make up for it. 

She raised that arm of hers, and knocked on the door– her many-ringed knuckles making a sharp noise against the wood, despite her delicate touch.

When no answer came, she turned the knob and walked right in, for she was the Princess of the Wilderwest, Daughter of the King and a Viking Hero in her own right, and courtesy to family meant slightly different things than courtesy to strangers. 

She didn’t look much like the old King, bent over his desk by the light of a flickering candle, writing something she could not read no matter how she craned her neck over his shoulder to see: they were father and daughter by Heart, not Blood. (Which is really the most important part, when you think about it.) Kerfuffle was not his only child, just the oldest of his children. the Castle on Tomorrow had been far from quiet in the sixty-some years since Hiccup’s coronation, and more often than not, Kerfuffle had been the ringleader of most of the noise-making plots.

Her red hair was gray at the roots, but his had gone entirely white, save for a few pepperings of the bright color it had been in his youth. 

“Father,” she said.

the King startled, glancing up from his work. “Kerfuffle? Why, I didn’t know you were home.” He accepted her kiss on his brow, and embraced her with a strength that belied his old, scrawny bones. 

“Made land just a few hours ago,” said Kerfuffle. “Borghildy led a delegation of Small Ones to greet me. I’m surprised you didn’t hear.” (Borghildy was neither the oldest nor the biggest of Hiccup’s grandchildren, but she was the LOUDEST, and the most opinionated of the lot, so if you wanted to know things, you asked her about it. Truly a worthy heir to Kerfuffle’s mischief-making youth.)

“I must’ve been preoccupied,” the King said, glancing unconsciously back towards his work, scattered over his desk in a disorderly mess, like a hurricane had tried its hand at being a librarian. 

Kerfuffle never met a question she didn’t want to know the answer to, so she plucked a paper off the nearest corner, intending to read it. 

Hiccup took it from her hands. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t,” he said, calmly and quietly. “It’s… well…” 

“You’ve been up here for weeks,” said Kerfuffle, trying to be firm yet cheerful. “I figure we ought to know what’s been keeping our King so busy, hmm?” 

Her humor did not catch on. Hiccup smiled, but it wasn’t particularly bright. “Nothing you need worry about, let me assure you.” 

Kerfuffle knew perfectly well that “nothing you need worry about” was parent-speak for “Definitely Worry About This Because Your Father Doesn’t Think He Can Tell You About It”, which was especially concerning when you were still being told it at _fifty_ , rather than fifteen.

“ _Father_.” She laid a gentle, scarred hand on his shoulder. “I tripped over about a week’s worth of untouched dinners on my way up the stairs.” She wiggled her booted foot, which was dotted with bits of moldy mashed potatoes, to emphasize her point.

Hiccup chuckled ruefully. “I just haven’t been particularly hungry.”

That, of course, was a truth, but used to cover whatever he was working on. 

“Books are letters we write to the future,” Hiccup said. “It’s too late for us. But the men and women of the future might still have a chance to do what we could not. To make a world where humans and dragons can live together as equals. They will need to know as much as they can.” 

***

A few weeks later, on a grey morning, an old, old man walked down to the edge of the Singing Sands, a small green dragon perched on his shoulder. He held a box carefully, his frail arms unused to being so tested after years of time and tide had whittled away their strength. 

He had no names written on his arm, nor a crown upon his brow, but if anyone had looked out a window in the City of Tomorrow, overlooking the Singing Sands, they would have recognized him as easily as they did Kerfuffle. 

No one did look, and perhaps that was for the best. 

“Goodbye,” the old man whispered to the box, for he’d gotten sentimental in his old age. “And hello, I hope.” 

He threw the box into the sea, and watched the waves sweep it away. 

***

Years and years and years later, a girl woke up with her cheek in the sand, and the rest of her draped over a box.


End file.
